ILMfan The Unofficial Industrial Light + Magic Site

The State of ILMfan 2001/2002

February 10, 2002 03:16:58,
by malducin

It's just been a few months since the site was re-launched and a new
year is upon us. 2001 was a good year not only for ILM but also for the
whole VFX community and already we have plenty to look forward for this
year. Now that things have stabilized with the site, I'm taking this
opportunity to give a brief updates on the ongoings of the site and some of
what is being planned for the future.

The State of ILMfan

We have had ups and downs this last few months but now I'm comfortable
enough with the infrastructure to do even more updates and bring new
features. I must say that doing this site is almost a full time job
(besides my regular one), but it's a lot of fun. My admiration for all
those hard working folks in the VFX industry and the fact that there are
many that also are fans and are willing to read about the happenings makes
it all worthwhile.

This constitutes the 200th news posting of ILMfan.com. I find it
shocking that we had so many posts and that we reached this milestone so
quickly. I would have been happy, when I took over updating, if I could get
an average of one new announcement per week. The flow of information has
been much greater and looking at ILM's slate of projects I'm sure we'll get
plenty more. The main site is now pretty easy to update with the phpWebsite
infrastructure. The forums are also running fine and administration has
become manageable. This will allow me to make many more updates and add new
features in the future. As always I'm open to suggestions and
criticism.

As far as visitors goes, it seems that they are polarized. There are
many that go to the main site but don't post or go to the forums, and there
are those that mainly hang around the forums but just check the main site
sparingly. Recently I added a simple navigation bar to make it easy for
people to go back and forth. While most viewers come from the US and
Canada, we have visitors from all over the world: Latin America, Europe,
Asia and the Pacific. I was quite amazed at how many visitors we get, well
beyond what I imagined. ILMfan also being referenced from other site across
the world. It also seems that we get many viewers from search engines,
especially Google. I must say that I want to thank all visitors, anonymous
or not, for coming to check this little space on the Web, if this site is
any good, it's in no small part to you.

Updates

So what's in store for the future? On the short term there are many
fixes and minor updates to do. The forums will require a minor upgrade,
probably in the next few weeks. After that it should be fine until phpBB 2
comes out sometime this year. The update is simple enough that will only
make the forums unavailable for a few hours on a weekend. I'll post
accordingly. The main site doesn't require any upgrades at the moment,
though there is one issue. One visitor informed me that the site didn't
display right, because ILMFan uses CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and of
course there are computers out there that don't have the latest and
greatest browsers available. I'm planning of rewriting the theme so as to
use old HTML 4 which will probably make it readable on 99% of browsers.
Though I don't plan to do it right away, but probably before the Summer. If
you have questions just ask me, or if you have those kind of issues and
have an opinion, let me know.

While the forums will stay basically the same for a while I have new
features planned for the main one. As some of you might have noticed, now
the 10 most recent announcements are displayed, and 15 older ones on the
older articles box. The menu is now extended by default. There seemed to be
a few problems with it. I also removed all options that didn't lead
anywhere. When I first set up the system I added many menu options for
things I wanted to add. Unfortunately I couldn't add things as fast as I
wanted or expected. But some of those pages will appear in the next few
months. The Awards sections is almost ready and should appear in a week or
so. I also have planned a small ILM primer and timeline. Also a small
reference page on what ILM is working on.

This brings us to the major update coming this year: the credits
database. Many people have asked for this and claimed it as the most
important feature missing. This will be my main priority this year. It will
be a huge endeavor. It will be database driven so as to facilitate not only
updates but also searches. The first phase will only have a list of all
films and their supervisors. At least that way people can see what ILM has
worked on. That shouldn't take long. But adding all credits will take
probably the better part of the year. In the end the system should be great
but in the meantime just have a little patience. Hopefully by the end of
March we'll have a listing of all films and a partial list of other
projects like commercials and special venues.

The other main feature is more articles. I've already posted the two
interview that thefan did for the previous incarnation of the site. There
is one more pending. I'm also currently writing a SIGGRAPH primer article
for those who either have never heard of it or haven't attended the
conference. I hope to have more articles in the future, maybe more
interviews and reports.

The other major feature, but planned for much later, maybe until well
into 2003 would be a gallery containing pictures of not only the projects
ILM has worked on but also the people and behind the scenes pics. Though I
can't promise it'll come to fruition, many things would have to be cleared
for that. There are other ideas floating around in my head but nothing
really certain or concrete. As always I'd love to hear criticism or
suggestions, you can either email me (malducin@ilmfan.com) or post in the
forums. I love hearing from other fans even if I'm a little late with my
responses. May the Force be with you!!!